Author Archives: MargariBlohm

Climate change turns birds into cannibals

by MargariBlohm Posted on August 2, 2016

bird brains

Climate change turns birds into cannibals

By on Aug 2, 2016Share

Could climate change be turning some species into cannibals? No, not humans — not yet, anyway. We’ve already seen polar bears and lobster eat their own kind for sustenance, thanks to melting ice and rising water temperatures.

Now, you can add Washington State’s gull population to that list. In the Pacific Northwest researchers have noticed a disturbing trend: As sea temperatures rise, plankton have dropped into lower, colder waters; fish have followed the plankton down. Gulls, which can no longer find enough food in shallow waters, have turned to eating each other’s chicks.

“It doesn’t seem like a lot, but a one-tenth of a degree change in seawater temperature correlates to a 10 percent increase in (the odds of) cannibalism,” said Jim Hayward, a seabird biologist, according to the Associated Press.

In the past 60 years, the Pacific Ocean has been warming 15 times the rate as any measured in 10,000 years.

If the gulls’ food-scarcity situation doesn’t improve, Hayward worries that “super cannibals” could evolve: A bird adapted to feed exclusively off its own species.

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Climate change turns birds into cannibals

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There’s a New Planned Parenthood Video, But There’s Just Nothing There

by MargariBlohm Posted on July 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Another day, another video hit job on Planned Parenthood. Apparently the strategy here is to release new videos every three or four days and hope that mere repetition is enough to convince people that something—something—must be wrong here. Over at National Review, Ian Tuttle is disturbed:

At the 10:22 mark of the Center for Medical Progress’s latest video, released today, there is a picture of a hand. By the curve of the thumb and the articulation of the fingers, one can see that it is a right hand. It was formerly the right hand of an 11.6-week-old fetus; it is now part of the various organic odds and ends being sifted through on a plate in the pathology lab of a Planned Parenthood clinic.

….I keep calling it a hand. Maybe I shouldn’t….But I see a hand — five fingers and lines across the joints, like you learn to sketch in art class. I see a hand in form no different from my own. Or no different from Horowitz’s hands, or Edison’s, or Michelangelo’s.

The most famous image Michelangelo painted was of hands: God’s hand extended to Adam’s….The sculptor Auguste Rodin spent much of his life fashioning hands….Rodin prefigured Heidegger’s observation: “My hand . . . is not a piece of me. I myself am entirely in each gesture of the hand, every single time.”….Galen of Pergamon, the great Greek physician, in his treatise On the Use of the Various Parts of the Body, noted that to man alone had the Creator chosen to give the hand, the only instrument “applicable to every art and occasion”:

….The gods, the arts, survival, history — all that we are has required, literally, many hands. In the hand, the whole man, and in the man, the whole cosmos.

Now, in a pie dish, for sale.

That’s very poetic, but like the video itself, tells us nothing. Yes, Planned Parenthood donates fetal tissue to medical research facilities. They charge enough to cover their costs, nothing more. Among the tissue they donate are hands. And this is not a sinister “black market,” as the video claims: It’s done in the open with the permission of the mother, and the tissue is transferred only to qualified researchers.

The idea behind the video, of course, is that it’s supposed to automatically trigger disgust in us. And it does. After all, most of us felt a little disgusted when we dissected frogs in 9th grade biology. It’s just part of human nature, and the Planned Parenthood haters are smart to take advantage of it.

But you know what? I’m an organ donor. I’m not sure my organs are actually safe for harvesting anymore, but if they are, then my body will be chopped up and used for its best and highest purpose when I’m dead. Some organs will be used for transplants, I hope. Some will be given to research laboratories. Some may end up as the raw materials for other stuff. If I were alive and watching, I’d probably feel pretty queasy. And yet, no one really blinks an eye at the routine job of harvesting organs and tissue from dead people who have given their permission.

This is no different. It’s every bit as altruistic and admirable as harvesting useful tissue from adults. Period.

So far, the worst anyone has come up with from these videos is that some of the Planned Parenthood folks caught on tape used a “tone” that was unfortunate. Give me a break. This is the way any doctor talks among other health care professionals. They’re experienced enough to talk plainly about their work in private, and they make jokes about it like any normal person. It’s simply wrong to pretend that this is anything ominous.

And that hand on the pie dish? Who knows? It might save someone’s life someday.

POSTSCRIPT: And I’ll repeat what I said before. If you think abortion is murder, then of course you object to the use of organs and tissue from aborted fetuses. If you don’t, then you think it’s fine. There’s nothing new going on here. It’s just a slightly different twist on the same fight between pro-lifers and pro-choicers that’s been going on for decades

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There’s a New Planned Parenthood Video, But There’s Just Nothing There

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Why Are Oklahoma Lawmakers Trying So Hard to Discriminate Against LGBTs?

by MargariBlohm Posted on March 13, 2015

Mother Jones

Sharon Bishop-Baldwin, a plaintiff in the case that challenged and defeated Oklahoma’s same-sex marriage ban, married her wife in October of last year, just hours after the Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal. “It is a great day to be gay in Oklahoma. It’s an even better day to be married,” she told the Dallas Morning News. One would think that the story would end there.

But soon afterwards, Bishop-Baldwin, an advisor at Oklahomans for Equality, encountered some potential setbacks: A slew of bills introduced since the beginning of 2015 aimed at making it easy for businesses to opt out of serving gay couples and more difficult for gay couples to get married. Other states, including Arkansas, Arizona, and Colorado, have introduced similar pieces of legislation—perhaps fueled by the Supreme Court’s announcement that it would decide the legality of gay marriage in all 50 states in April.

Oklahoma has been a hub for this push, with at least 12 anti-LGBT bills introduced since the beginning of the year. “We have all of them—our lawmakers didn’t miss any tricks,” says Bishop-Baldwin. “We are as upset by the animus behind the bills as we are by the content of them.”

Fortunately for Bishop-Baldwin and other gay advocates, the most controversial bills weren’t heard—meaning they were effectively killed—during the last day of the state’s legislative session yesterday. Some of the anti-LGBT bills, however, remain on the table.

Here’s a sample of the most contentious legislation:

Killed: House Bill 1599 would have prohibited public funding of any activity supporting same-sex marriage, likely leading to a confrontation between state and federal authorities.

Killed: House Bill 1598 would have protected a parent’s right to bring a child to “conversion therapy” that aims to eliminate same-sex attraction.

Killed: House Bill 1371 would have allowed small businesses, like florists, bakers, or photographers, to refuse to provide wedding services if the business owner disagrees with the wedding on religious grounds.

Approved: House Bill 1125 does away with marriage licenses altogether—for straight and gay couples—instead requiring marriage officiants to file “certificates of marriage” after the fact. Rep. Todd Russ, who introduced the bill, said its purpose is to “protect” county clerks from being forced to issue licenses to same-sex couples. The bill now goes to the senate.

Approved: Senate Bill 788 and House Bill 1007 allow clergy to refuse to solemnize a marriage that violates their religious belief. Critics point out that federal law already grants clergy this right. The bills now go to the house and senate, respectively.

With the death of the most extreme bills on Thursday, LGBT advocates have declared a modest victory. When I spoke with Bishop-Baldwin on the phone after the legislative session ended yesterday, she said, a little sardonically: “It is a great day in Oklahoma.” She paused and sighed, adding, “It’s a shame in Oklahoma that we have to fight this kind of crap.”

More here – 

Why Are Oklahoma Lawmakers Trying So Hard to Discriminate Against LGBTs?

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